-The Secretariat of the EP Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee issued a comparative chart highlighting which of the Parliament's amendments were taken on board in the Commission's amended prospectus proposal.
The two main concerns with regard to the “amended” proposal are the issues of:
Issuer Choise. Choice of regulatory authority is limited to non-equity securities with a minimum denomination of € 50.000. For other securities the regulatory authority is that where the issuer is registered.
Annual updating. Information on the issuer should be updated in the prospectus or registration document on an annual basis. It should be clarified that this updating is intended to refer to the ongoing disclosure requirements already undertaken via current market practices.
Other outstanding questions are for example:
problems in certain Member States due to the reference to nomination of a 'central' competent authority, and of competent authorities which are “completely independent from all market participants”;
the definition of securities in the Prospectuses and the Investment Services Directive. This could therefore exclude the majority of the warrants and certificates markets from the directive (and therefore from the passport) since certain types of underlying (such as indices/currencies/commodities/interest rates) would not be covered by the definition of securities (warrants would also be excluded from the issuer choice € 50,000 threshold since they are not sold in denominations).
The Danish Presidency aims to reach a 'political agreement' in early November 2002 and has scheduled a large number of Council working group meetings and bilateral negotiations in order to attain this goal. The most controversial area in the Council is issuer choice. In order to achieve the adoption of a Prospectus Directive in a reasonable timeframe, it would appear to be essential to compromise on this point.
Comparative Chart
© European Parliament
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